So friends, as you know, I always carry two smartphones
in my two pockets
and it has always been
google Pixel 5a in one of them.
And finally today I have upgraded to Pixel 6a.
It is launching in India for around Rs. 44,000.
In the US, it's for 450 US dollars.
And let me tell you what I think about it.
First of all, I am a big fan of Pixel.
My first Pixel phone was Google Pixel 4a
which was launched for around 30k INR
in India.
And in the US it was around 350 USD.
It was a very competitive price
during the time of Covid when a lot of the people were dealing with recession
and I personally think that it was a game changer in terms of pricing.
At that time even iPhone SE was 400 dollars.
And Pixel 4a was around 350 dollars.
So it was a very competitive pricing
and many creators gave it the smartphone of the year award.
Or budget smartphone of the year award.
But this time, Google Pixel 6a has launched
for 450 USD
and India's pricing - which I felt was a little high
44,000 Rs.
But I think it could be worth it.
Because I think there are so many fans of Pixel.
And specially with Google's Tensor chip,
it could be game changing.
I'll tell you honestly why this phone is very important for a lot of people.
Specially for android developers and software engineers.
Because most of the software engineers that you will see
they use the native provided OS
given to them by Google.
Imagine if someone wants to make an app,
and they want to test it for Android 13,
which will be released now in October,
This is the month of July!
So imagine if you want to test your app.
Let's say you made an app - a calculator or a GST calculator...
And you want to test that app on Android 13,
which will be released on October.
How will you test it?
The only way is to use a Google Phone.
Download or join their Beta program.
So that you can download the Beta version of Android 13
and then you can test it.
So that's why most of the Android developers
actually rely on their Google phones
so that they can test.
So Google phones are very very popular.
And it is very important for the Indian market.
Many android developers..
If we look at it,
one of the highest number of Android developers in the world
are in India.
They can control the Android market of the whole world.
That's why I personally think that India's market must have been competitive.
I think it could have been 40,000 INR.
..honestly.
But 44,000 isn't that bad I'll say.
Now let's talk about the performance.
I am actually using Google Pixel 5a since the past year.
I always had this phone in my pocket in India. I still have it.
And I was so amazed by the performance of Pixel 5a
First of all, the battery life-
it had one of the best standby time.
When I was travelling to India from the US
with 90% battery life,
when I landed in India, 85% on battery saving mode!
Very incredible!
And still now, if I use it regularly,
it lasts for 1-2 days.
With limited camera and phone calls. It is so incredible!
And now after switching to Pixel 6a from the last 1-2 weeks,
I have experienced the same battery.
Not just... same as Pixel 5a but better
in some cases.
And my second favourite feature of this phone is
the camera. I don't have to say it because this is
3-4 years old sensor.
But the way they have utilised it is amazing.
This is my favourite photo that I took.
This is the long exposure shot
and it was taken on night mode.
Very impressive.
And now I would like to show you
how I shot my today's day
on this phone as well.
And this is the video test without the speech enhancement
So it does not have noise cancellation. You might be hearing the car's sound.
So this is the video test with speech enhancement on.
It has very decent noise cancellation.
I wish there was smell cancellation.
I didn't mean to.. What's the scientific word?
Flatulence?
Not the scientific word but it's like the nice word yeah..
I actually didn't mean to flatulence..
No no! Flatulence is a noun..
I think the verb is flatulent or something...
Oh flatulent!!
(LAUGHS)
I loved the vlogging experience.
Specially because of the selfie camera
in which you get noise cancellation or audio enhancement.
It is really amazing.
I wish they added the back camera as well...
If you are vlogging with the wide angle lens
it would have been very useful.
But the front camera is quite amazing.
Since people can put a microphone easily on the back camera
but for front camera, most of the people don't use microphone.
I felt the audio quality is very impressive in some cases.
Now number 3 - performance.
Even though Pixel 5a had a 60Hz display,
But not the google Tensor chip.
The google Tensor chip plus 60Hz is giving me so smooth experience
I think it almost feels like 90Hz.
That was similar to Google Pixel 6.
But honestly I felt it was very smooth.
When I was gaming in Pixel 5a,
it used to get very hot.
Pixel 6a doesn't heat up that much. I think
the phone heating problem is still there. But it's less
than Pixel 5a because of their native chip.
When you play more games, the performance is awesome.
But the phone gets a little warm for sure.
But the performance in this phone is pretty amazing overall.
as compared to their previous Google Phones.
Now last will be small features
that the Google phone helps you in changing your life.
Number one would be - automation.
So I have set rules here - as I go to the office,
this phone must set up do not disturb or silent mode
which helps me a lot.
Before, I had to put the phone on do not disturb manually.
But currently it goes automatically based on location.
Not just location, you can provide Wi-Fi as well.
If you want to disable location,
you can provide... the moment I am connected to office Wi-Fi,
this will go to do not disturb.
You might get this feature after downloading apps in other phones.
But on Google Pixel you can natively do it.
So that's really spectacular.
Number two would be the camera. Last year you might remember...
I told you a feature how you can remove the background.
Now they have enhanced it.
You can not only remove. You can actually camouflage
something that you don't like in the background.
For example I clicked this picture last time in India while buying Airtel SIM.
And I can even go back to that photo and edit it.
And in that photo I can remove
Airtel's SIM card. I can camouflage or remove it.
It is pretty well done.
So I am really impressed by these small small features
that you only get in a pixel phone.
Another small feature but very useful for me
when you go to a party - this tells you immediately on your homescreen
which song you are listening to.
You will feel like you will use JAM and external apps to recognise a song
but it is useful for me because
if you
sometimes in a party, you don't have time to use your phone.
So this song gets added to the album
and you can check it later.
"Oh! This was the song in the party!"
And you can keep on adding to your playlist.
So it is very very useful to me.
And right now for all the students
this feature is gonna make all the iPhone users so jealous!
That is not just a feature. It's an app called google lens.
You can get it on Android phones.
But it is embedded to the camera of Google Pixel.
As you open the camera, you can see an option in modes.
Google Lens.
And after going to Google lens,
you can actually go to an option called
Homework.
You can go to homework
and choose any of the IIT JEE questions
take any question and take a photo
and it immediately takes me to Google results which has the answer
to that JEE advanced or JEE mains question.
Which makes the whole process so easy
If you are preparing for JEE, if you want to check the answer to a question
you don't need to to to the answer sheet.
Use Google Lens immediately. Go to the homework section.
And you will have the answer with the solution in front of you
within seconds.
You don't need to search it in a book.
So this is a very very useful and underrated feature.
You get this in most Android phones.
So I think an Android phone might be more
useful for the Indian market in such cases.
Because I can't see Google lens in iPhone's App store yet.
And last- not least. For students
that's gonna be the recorder feature.
I have used it plenty of times. When I am in a meeting,
what happens is- the manager tells you that some points are important for a slide.
And a normal person would be taking notes.
But what I do is, I just go to the meeting and just record
that lesson.
So when I am recording I can enable transcript
and it is such a nice recording
in fact my Hindi and English,
it can actually recognise every single word that I speak.
Sometimes Hindi accurately as well.
And English every single word accurately.
Whatever I am speaking live
and whatever my manager speaks to me.
I can copy it from the recorder app
and put it in the PowerPoint slides.
So it can be so useful.
If you are doing your homework,
if you cannot focus in a lecture,
you can just record the lecture and read through the notes
from that recorder app itself.
So this feature - Pixel native it is mind boggling.
This is most important for me.
If I am going to a meeting and I don't have this feature,
I won't even go to the meeting.
I will say "Let me bring my Pixel first."
So these features makes the whole Pixel experience so much fulfilling to me.
So I always keep this in my pocket.
And..
if we talk about cons, number one is pricing.
It's good for US market but for Indian market it's bit expensive.
And number two would be the heating issues.
Sometimes when you do a high performance task,
it does get heated up.
If you use the camera, video recording,
for 30 minutes, it's gonna get warm.
That's the truth.
I cannot hide it from you. That is the truth.
And during fast charging it gets warm as well.
But it's not really really warm that it will hurt you.
It's much better than before.
It's just little bit warm.
And the overall package is amazing.
Battery life - display.
It doesn't have a headphone jack anymore.
But I don't think anyone would care for a headphone jack.
Pixel 5a had it.
So I think it could be a good bundle. You can definitely go for it.
And thank you so much for watching.